Barring an incredibly unlikely space ship rescue of stranded astronauts during Space Shuttle Endeavor’s final mission–ever–in November, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will never launch again.
At 8:48am EDT, Atlants, commanded by Ken Ham and piloted by “Tony” Antonelli, dropped from orbit safely and glided back to earth, landing at the Kennedy Space Center. There had been a chance that Atlantis would have to wait for morning showers to get out of the way, to then try landing later this morning, or Thursday, but the weather worked out and violated none of NASA’s landing constraints.
The 12 day mission accomplished quite a bit up at the International Space Station, installing a new Russian-built module and docking station, a 6-pack of batteries for power and a new antenna for the I.S.S.
A few of the astronauts even made an out-of-this world appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, joking that the mission had gone very well, and that the crew had even defeated the forces of evil while 220 miles above the earth.
Atlantis will now be cleaned up and prepared for one more possible mission, as the “rescue ship” for NASA’s last Space Shuttle mission ever, in case the NASA determines that Endeavor is unsafe to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. This was Atlantis’ 32nd mission, and during it, surpassed flying 120 million miles in space.